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BIG PHYSICS, BIG QUESTIONS –

Technology: . . . while Japan admits that analogue TV is a dead end

A director of Japan’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications last week
caused uproar by admitting publicly what the country’s electronics and
broadcast industries have long known, but refused to acknowledge: Japan’s
analogue HDTV system, Hi Vision, was obsolete even before it was officially
launched, on November 25, 1991 – a date chosen to match its 1125-line picture
format. Even his retraction the next day did not disown a statement that
the rest of the world is going for digital versions. In some cases, Japanese
companies will make them.

At the Tokyo studio complex of the Japanese state broadcaster NHK, one
floor is devoted to analogue 1125-line HDTV production. Eminent visitors
are shown demonstrations using high power projectors which produce clear
pictures whose quality approaches film. But the downstairs lobby tells a
more realistic story. Staff and visitors can watch HDTV – but only on sets
with picture quality so poor that 525-line sets beside them look better.

NHK, along with electronics companies led by Sony, began work on HDTV
20 years ago. By 1980, NHK was demonstrating working prototypes, and Hi
Vision was first used commercially at the 1984 Olympics. Sony then developed
an HDTV recording and edit-ing system, which it loaned to Hollywood movie
studios as a replacement for film.

Briefly in the late 1980s the US State Department suppported Hi Vision.
But Hollywood stuck with film, finding it cheaper and easier to use, with
better picture quality. By 1990 the US government had dropped support for
Hi Vision, under public pressure to rebuild a native North American electronics
industry. (A ‘grand alliance’ of US manufacturers is now close to finalising
the standard for an all-digital HDTV system for use in the US.) In Europe,
analogue HD-MAC effectively died when Sky began broadcasting in old-fashioned
PAL in February 1989. Japan was isolated in its commitment to an analogue
future. The rest of the world was clearly going to go digital.

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Since the service launch NHK has transmitted at least eight hours of
HDTV a day from a satellite. But the first year of programmes stimulated
sales of only 15 000 Hi Vision sets. They were expensive, costing over a
million yen (about £6500), heavy, and large enough to almost fill
the average Japanese sitting room. Many were in fact bought by rival manufacturers
checking each others’ products and for use in public demonstrations, for
instance at railway stations.

Many of the ‘HDTV’ sets now on sale in Japan may have a wide screen,
but in fact they convert the high-definition signal into the old-fashioned
NTSC 525-line standard – so the definition is no better than a conventional
domestic TV set.